i still think that your problem is with where initrd is placed and grub.conf notation but then, what do i know

I came across this thread and decided "Neat let's work!". Patch worked seamlessly, splash created the initrd properly in the right location, however, on reboot, nothing but Tux. Not a bad thing, but not the ideal. SO, for all those folx having silent not-quit-failures (RickDB, Joffer and others) try this ...

GRUB can take device names in paths to specify filesystem locations, and that is what tooke me from Tux to the Gentoo boot splash from the original post. modify your initrd= line to resemble the following:

using it with 2.4.20-ck2 and a custom bootscreen of my own surprisingly similar to the one by timmfin. Surprisingly, because I developed it some time at Xmas without watching this thread. (doh, sorry folks, I got no online space to post it - pm me if you'd like to have it via email)

Now, to make all ttys look like that... heheh..._________________Need to flame people LIVE on IRC? Join #gentoo-otw on freenode!

After following the instructions from the bootsplash 0.4 ebuild and getting a great boot splash screen, I realized that the concept could be improved even more. Consequently, I created an init.d script that will randomly change the splash screen for every boot. This means you will see a different splash screen each time you boot your computer.

Prerequisites
Before using the script, you will need to have a working setup and multiple splash screens. Also, you must set a few variables in the script.

Script variables
MountBoot - Set this variable to "true" if your /boot directory is on a separate partition, not /. The script will attempt to automount the partition to make the necessary changes. You should have a /etc/fstab entry for the partition if you expect this to work.

Boot - The location of your boot directory. By default, it is set to "/boot".

BootDir - The location of initrd. By default, it is set to "$Boot".

BootSplash - The bootsplash directory. If you used the bootsplash 0.4 ebuild, the default is fine.

Images - The location of your splash screens. By default, it is set to "$BootSplash/images".

If you use the default values, your filesystem should look like this:
/boot (on a separate partition)
/boot/initrd
/usr/share/bootsplash-0.4
/usr/share/bootsplash-0.4/images

Copy the script to /etc/init.d and make it executable. Finally, copy the splash screens to /usr/share/bootsplash-0.4/images (the default) or your $Images variable. Each splash screen needs it own .cfg file in the directory. For example, /usr/share/bootsplash-0.4/images might look something like this:
splash1.cfg
splash1.jpg
splash2.cfg
splash2.jpg
splash3.cfg
splash3.jpg

Running the script
The script is run like a regular init.d script. In other words, as root, type the command "/etc/init.d/bootsplash start". The script will not do anything when it is started. The splash screen is only changed when the script is stopped, i.e. at restart/shutdown. This is done to avoid messing up the restart/shutdown screen. Finally, add the script to your default runlevel if everything seems to work correctly when it is run manually.

Now thta everything is running fine for me too, I was only still wondering how to achieve a higher refresh rate than 60Hz ?
Can I somehow tell LILO to use 85 or better 100 Hz ?
Or is there a tool to switch the framebuffer modes that does work ?

fbset, doesn't change the mode..

when I run it "fbset 1024x768-100" ,
it says: Vesafb doesn't support changing the video mode.
And it says: ioctl FBIOPUT_VSCREENINFO: Invalid argument

i got it working. had to hack the file a little with the changing names to linux for the kernel (in next ebuild, can you make it that way already??)
yesterday made it work on the win4lin sources that way, and now (didnt like windows) on gentoo-sources 2.4.20-r1 without any other changes to the patch.
compiling again, and hope I wont have to make the initrd and stuff again.
(shouldnt, since I didnt emerge the files, just fetched it)
it works awesome, but I hope the gentoo-sources would get rid of the slowdown of fluxbox boot on startxdfb

I was wondering about the "box" that is in many of the bootsplash screens? What is the purpose? if it is for reading text, how do you get text to center there? I use grub so maybe this is a lilo vs grub thing?

Also, can the color of the text be changed? or is this again the reason for the box?

Bug 15075 in Bugzilla seems to point to gentoo-sources-2.4.20-r1 as being part of the problem, but I've seen posts where people are using bootsplash with vanilla-sources-2.4.20 (what I'm running) Is the problem with the e-build itself or the differences in the kernels?

Im currently using a Geforce4 and my framebuffer is at 1280x1024 @ 85 Hz
XDirectFB is now also very pretty!

Heres what I did to resolve the refresh rate problem, which is practically invisible.

To begin with, I have Windows 2000 installed on my C: drive and I now have to boot Linux using the Windows bootloader.

I installed MS-DOS on my C: drive (with Win2k on it) using a bootdisk ( SYS C: ). This breaks the Win2k bootloader. To fix the bootloader, I made a file (READ.SCR) which contains these lines:

Code:

L 100 2 0 1
N C:\BOOTSECT.DOS
R BX
0
R CX
200
W
Q

And I run this command in DOS:

DEBUG <READ.SCR

This will make a file called BOOTSECT.DOS on your C: drive, which is actually an image of the current bootsector.

Now we put in the Windows 2000 CD-ROM and boot it. After the loading stuff finishes, it asks you if you want to install Windows or repair it. Choose repair. Then it asks you if you want to use disks or the console; choose the console. After you logged in, type the command FIXBOOT, which will restore the bootloader.

So now Windows can boot again. All we have to do to boot DOS now is add an entry to it, so we add this line to C:\BOOT.INI:

C:\="Gentoo Linux 1.4"

You can set the default to C:\ if you want Linux to boot as default.

Ok, we can now boot Windows and DOS, but DOS doesnt load Linux yet!

To fix the refresh rates, we need 2 programs: UNIRFRSH and VBEPLUS. You can try to find those with Google, but I made a zip file with all the files you need (link will follow).

Now you have to boot DOS and configure UNIRFRSH using the setup program included.

If you did all that, try running VBEPLUS and then UNIRFRSH to see if it all works.

If its all ok, we can continue by automating the boot process.
First, you have to make a copy of your Linux kernel (bzImage) to your DOS directory and put LOADLIN.EXE with it (also in the zip).

Now, to make it all work at once, make an autoexec.bat in C: that looks similar to this one (also in the zip):

What we do here:
First we turn off the echoing, so we dont see any DOS rubbish. Then we go to the dir where you installed VBEPLUS, and run it. Same thing with UNIRFRSH. Then using LOADLIN we boot up Linux, including your parameters.

If it all works and you like it, you can remove the Linux bootloader. If LILO is still installed you can set the timeout and delay to 0 and make it boot Windows immediately, so you get the Windows bootloader. From there you can then choose Windows or Linux

It works perfectly here, I dont see any difference booting Linux this way or with LILO, and I have a nice framebuffer with XDirectFB on it.

It took a while before I had this all worked out, so I might have forgotten something. For instance, youll probably need to configure your fb device to actually run at 85 Hz. You can make a modeline for XFree86 and convert it to a framebuffer mode with modeline2fb, which you can then add to /etc/fb.modes

Has anybody got this working with the 2.5.6x kernels? Are there any steps that are different (make menuconfig is organised quite differently in places)._________________Want Free games?
Free Gamer - open source games list & commentary

I recently became very interested in doing the splash screen on my Gentoo Box and was working through this fabulous thread and realized we have three different kinds of content here. After some discussions with the other moderators and admins I have decided to work on "cleaning house" on this very valuable thread. What I am attempting to do is make the thread most effective. The way I intend to do this is by splitting the thread into three separate (related) threads given there are three major topics covered currently. The idea is that this will allow people to more easily digest all the wonderful information currently in the one massive thread we have now. Here is how I am going to break things down.

"How to Do it" which is basically the steps and directions on how to get it working. This will stay in the Documentation, Tips & Tricks forum.

"How to fix it, or troubleshoot it (errors etc.)" which is where you go if you followed the directions in the first thread but ran into trouble. This content will move into the Other Things Gentoo forum.

"Check out my pretty boot screen" which is where people can talk about and post all the pretty pics we all want to see and share! This content will move into the Off The Wall forum.

After discussing with the other moderators about the posts that contain more than one type of the three categorized content types we have concluded they will be left in the current original thread.

[EDIT: Removed comment about locking the thread temporarily, this has been done and undone already. The thread is again open for normal traffic]

Thanks for your patience!

Regards,
BonezTheGoon

Feel free to send me comments and or suggestions via PM.

Last edited by BonezTheGoon on Thu Mar 13, 2003 7:51 pm; edited 1 time in total

Please post any images or discussion about images (other than technical details that pertain to getting things to work like image dimensions, sizes, and formats which can all stay here -- unless it is support related.) to the thread named "Boot Splash (background picture ala SuSE) pics library, etc" in Off The Wall.

Please only post tips and other documentation here, no support questions should be here. Some feature related questions have been left here because I feel they likely belong.

Thanks everyone for such a wealth of good information! I can't wait to get this working on my box!!!

Please see the previous post about where to post for support, where to post for images, and ONLY tips and documentation go into this thread from now on. The last three posts that were made here (after my previous post) have been split out into a new thread which can be found here. This thread has been locked given these posts should have gone here for support for this Tip. Unfortunately it appears that phpBB will not let me merge these latest three posts into the correct thread like I want to. This is the best solution I can come up with.

The SuSe devs have updated bootsplash to version 3. Version 3 inlcudes theme support, a progress bar and a silentjpeg. I updated the howto to point to the new files.

I am currently trying to get the progress bar and silentjpeg (think this is a picture that covers whole screen w/ no text being displayed) figured out. Your old bootsplashes should work, you just need to grab the new config file. Also the splash utility will create a translucent box on the fly.

Enjoy.

Last edited by kachaffeous on Sun Mar 23, 2003 3:31 pm; edited 1 time in total